forum for sem?

[Former Member]

why not a separate forum for discussing the issues on Strategic Enterprise Management(SEM).I am unable to figure out such a forum here.It would be great if we can have one.

Ragav

[Former Member]

If SAP wants the implementation of the CPM products to be/become successful a SEM/CPM forum is desperately needed. I am about to implement Risk Management and related parts of BSc at a customer, but I have nowhere to turn with questions and problems except posting OSS'.

There is very limited access to information, experience and support and a forum would definitively be an improvement.

[former_member588240]

Although BPS queries are replied in BW-BPS, we need a separate forum for discussing the implementation issues involved in SEM-BCS and SEM-CPM.

My vote for starting SEM forum.

Thank you,

Shankar

[Former Member]

Hello to everybody,

I totally agree that a SEM forum is <b>heavily</b> needed. As a BI and SEM consultant and being responsible for the topic in our consulting company I am currently heavily missing any kind of useful information about the Ramp Up SEM 6.0 release.

In the BI area, the information dissemination in the market works <i>relatively</i> fine (although from 2000-2003 it even was much better there than it is today).

With regard to SEM, I am currently wondering, if there still is anybody responsible for SEM at SAP at all and if there still are any Product Managers "alive" and if so why they do not provide any information about the upcoming SEM 6.0 release???

It is really embarrassing... In January 2006 I need to tell one of our really large customers something about Netweaver 2004s and especially about BI 7.0 (oh sorry, I forgot, BI 7.0 is not the official term... )

Anyway, I definitely I could not tell anything about the changes in the new SEM 6.0 release currently. This is especially ashaming since most of our BI customers had installed SEM on top of their SAP BI installation in the past due to the fact, that the former SEM "Business Planning functionality" (SEM-BPS) has been part of the SEM software in the past (and still is existing there in parallel to the same functionality in BW). And even if the customers switch now to the new "Integrated Planning functionality" in SAP BI software, they still need to upgrade not only SAP BI 3.5 to SAP BI 7.0 (oh really, I beg your pardon, guys, I meant the "SAP BI "usage type" in SAP Netweaver 2004s"), but also from SEM Release 4 to SEM release 6.0. Keep in mind, once you installed SEM on top of BW you never ever are able to de install it. As a logical consequence, if you plan to upgrade from BI 3.5 or lower to BI... o.k. Netweaver 2004s with usage type BI, then you also need to upgrade to the corresponding SEM release 6.0. Otherwise you have a problem. Approximately (my personal guess) around 60 percent of all SAP BI customers are concerned from that...

And if they need to upgrade SEM also, they - not surprisingly - also expect <i>detailed</i> information about the changes in the new SEM release. But there is no information available - at least not for Partners. (The current definition of SAP about what Partnership means is really "wonderful" It seems to be not a bi directional way...).

The situation is even much worse for those companies using SEM with a focus to SEM <b>BCS</b> (Business consolidation). These companies expect detailed information for obvious reasons. And once again, there is no information! Or at least I cannot find it in the more and more growing numbers of information sources (service Net, SDN... and the numerous different locations there. It is absolute chaotic...)

Are there still any doubts that a specific SEM forum is heavily needed? If not for SEM CPM questions, (since even SAP already seems to believe now that nobody uses the Software, even if this is definitely NOT true from my experience...), then at least for SEM <b>BCS</b> specific questions...

Finally, if I take the number of information or the number of changes in a area such as service.sap.com/sem as an indicator or a basis for my personal guess about the SAP internal evaluation of a component being "alive" or "dead", then I come to the terrible conclusion that SEM obviously is a dead solution.

What - to be honest - <b>would be really a pity</b>. The functionality is <b>not sooo bad</b>... There is only a wrong and <b>not sufficient promotion</b> and - I guess - lots of SAP internal politics behind it... (SEM department versus BI department - nice history...)

It would be nice to get a certain statement from SAP about the future direction of SEM - especially whether there still will be a further development of the functionality or not, and a stronger promotion if not, it would like to know that to be able to "relaunch" my own positioning and to invest my energy to more promising fiels...

Best regards (a "little" bit frustrated),

Joachim Schirra

P.S.: Maybe focusing on xApps, CAF and BI is much more promising...

[Former Member]

Joachim,

Do you have any information about the upgrade to 6.0? I am desesperatly looking for BCS related information and can not find any...

Thanks for helping

Stephan

[Former Member]

Craig, didn't see any SEM voting. Saw SCM, SRM, etc. but not SEM.

Pizzaman, even there is a BI-Business Planning forum, it was only created beacause BW now has BPS as part of it, but not the whole functionality as in SEM.

So,I insist there must be a specific SEM forum.

[Former Member]

For a new forum we need to ensure we have lot's of data, we'll take a look and see what we can do.

[Former Member]

A home for SEM - take a look at the new BPS forum that was just created.

[Former Member]

It would be great to have a SEM Forum. Since 1999 (my first SEM implementation)I haven't found anything like it. Even though there might be some issues alike with Netweaver Components (BW, KM, & Portals), I strongly recommend to have a specific SEM forum.

[Former Member]

Have you checked out the voting? /community [original link is broken]

[Former Member]

Agree completely -

SEM really does need it's own forum. Many topics that are unqiue to SEM, e.g. planning functions, layouts, etc.